The questions focus on how they got their start in security to what kind of equipment you should have in your lab. We’ll also talk about what kind of experience is expected when taking the CCNA Security exam.

So let’s just dive into the Q&A:

How did you get your start in security?

John Stuppi (John): I joined Time Inc. (publishing division of Time Warner) in 1998 as a Network Engineer and we had a staff of three (including my manager) so we had to wear a lot of hats: network design, network engineering, network operations, and network security.

We started out managing Check Point firewalls and then became involved with various VPN and Security products from Cisco. Since I’ve been with Cisco (starting in September 2000) I have been 100% focused on network security.

Omar Santos (Omar): I started in security when I joined the U.S. Marines in 1994 and then provided support for the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) until 1999. I joined Cisco shortly after, and just like John, I have been fully focused on network security.

I started in Cisco’s Technical Assistance Center (TAC) supporting all security products. After a 4-year tour in the TAC, I joined the World Wide Security Practice leading several security engagements (i.e., security architecture reviews, security implementations, design guidelines, etc.) for Forture 100/500 customers and government organizations.

In 2007, I joined Cisco’s Product Security Incident Response Team (PSIRT) in the Security Research and Organization group. In PSIRT, I investigate and drive-to-resolution security vulnerabilities in all Cisco products and services, evangelizing security automation, and also assisting customers that are under attack or have been breached.

Cisco announced the end of CCNA Security v2.0 exam for November 30th, 2015. After that date, you may only take the new 210-260 exam.

You have the choice to pick either exam at the moment.

So what’s new with CCNA Security? What do you need to know between v2.0 and v3.0 (210-260). The CCNA Security is an Associate level exam from Cisco Systems, focusing on the Security track.

The prerequisites for this certification is a valid CCENT or CCNA Routing and Switching certification. At 90 minutes, you will be presented with 60-70 questions and it is proctored by Pearson Vue.

What’s New In CCNA Security 210-260?

Otherwise known as IINS or Implementing Cisco Network Security, this latest revision gets pared down from 9 objectives to 7. A couple of objectives were shuffled around and combined with others.

An example is the Security Concepts objective. I welcome this change as v2.0 used to have concepts scattered in different objectives. Most of these require you describe or identify common security concepts.